The present application relates generally to plant nursery operations and, more particularly, to methods and systems utilizing autonomous mobile robots for maintenance or other processing of container-grown plants.
Automation in the nursery and greenhouse sector of the agriculture market is generally confined to large greenhouses. Such greenhouses typically utilize fixed rails and conveyors to move plant-holding containers about the greenhouse, where various processes are performed on the plants as they mature. The controlled, indoor environment of the greenhouse is conducive to implementation of automatic machinery that can bring needed resources to each plant, and also transport plants to particular machines such as vision systems used for grading and sorting plants.
Growers whose products are grown mostly on large outdoor fields (typical of many operators in the United States) make do with manual labor. Automated machinery and vision systems developed for indoor use are not generally used by outdoor growers as these systems are not well-suited to work in uncontrolled and unstructured environments.